How Should I Respond to the Phrase “Just Follow the Science”?

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How Should I Respond to the Phrase “Just Follow the Science”?

March 31, 2025

Questions about how to respond when someone says, “Just follow the science,” and whether or not it’s a good tactic to cite evolutionists’ lack of a good biogenesis theory in support of the teleological argument.

* How should I respond to the phrase “Just follow the science?”

* Is it a good tactic to cite evolutionists’ lack of a good biogenesis theory in support of the teleological argument?

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of the hashtag STRask podcast with Greg Koukl and Amy Hall. Amy Hall. There's only so many ways you can say that.

I don't know. Good to be with you this one, Amy. You too, Greg.

Today we have some questions that are related to science. Okay. And this first one comes from James.

A phrase seems to be gaining, quote, just follow the science. Science is framed as specific, absolute, quote, so-and-so is just ignoring the science. Can you help me frame a response? Well, yeah, there's a couple of thoughts here.

I think that we have to keep in mind. You said science is framed as specific and absolute. Well, it's certainly a specific.

They are claims that are made about the natural world. That are determined by a number of different things, maybe observation, maybe reflection, maybe measurement, whatever, but they are meant to make an assessment of the material realm. All right.

This idea that there's this scientific method that is one particular thing is that's simply not true. It's a variety of different tools that they use that can be used to determine the nature of physical reality. Okay.

But so it is specific in that sense in the claims. It is not absolute because those who practice science will tell you that science is, oh, I mean, this is what they often say. They don't live this way, but it says it's always preliminary assessments and they're open to changes with new information.

And in fact, what's happened over the years when you look at our scientific knowledge is you see big dramatic shifts in the way the world was understood. They see it one way. And then all of a sudden they consider new things as a paradigm shift.

Okay. And this concept of paradigm shift is an important detail in the history of science. All right.

So point being, it's not absolute. It needs to be open to revision. Now, in practice, it turns out it's not always so flexible.

And because there was another detail, then that is a metaphysical element that comes in to the process. And that is metaphysical materialism, the idea that the material universe is all there is. Therefore, if you're ever going to make any statements about reality, it has to comport with this metaphysical materialism as a philosophy.

And this is why people say, well, intelligent design is religion disguised as science. Well, that's that's self serving. And what it turns out to be is metaphysical materialism is religion.

And what was the word I used to disguise this science. Okay. So we have to keep those separate.

All right. And, and just follow the facts. And I think that's the appeal that people are making when they say follow the science, follow the science, follow the science.

I actually think that's good advice. If it's taken seriously. A lot of times it's not taken seriously, because what it amounts to is what they mean is follow the conventional wisdom of those who are the only group that are allowed to speak.

Right. And so, and we've had a number of issues in the last, say, few years where this has come up, follow the science, follow the science, whether it's mass or COVID or, you know, whole host of other things, climate change, whatever. And it turns out only one side is allowed to speak.

And this, by the way, is a serious red flag and I'm not taking sides right now on either of those issues, but I am telling you this. If you see the effort, an effort of those who are actually in power by and large to silence alternate views, and this has been very popular in the last, I would say the last 10 years, but especially in the last five years. Okay.

And identify thing as disinformation. How do we know it's disinformation because those people told us that the way you find out whether it's disinformation is peer review. This is why when you write scientific journals, you have people who are capable of assessing it accurately, weighing in on either side to see if the material is good.

But when one point of view is silence, regardless of the bona fides of the person speaking, that stinks of kind of a totalitarian approach. There's only one side, our side, we're always right. Everybody else is wrong.

And if anybody tries to give us other information to the contrary, we're going to silence it. Now, this is this is political maneuvering ideological bullying. People have an ideology they want to support and they will not countenance any evidence contrary to it.

This is huge in our culture right now. When you see that happening, that's when when you know that something illicit is a foot. All right.

And in those areas, I mentioned, whether it's gender stuff, whether it's climate change stuff, whether it's a COVID related issues, we see that happening. Now, if the science that is the conventional wisdom quote, unquote, in other words, those in power, the view of those in power that control the flow of information, if it's good, it's going to be able to survive peer review. And in this case, it's peer review from the broader public and those who are in a professional position with the bona fides necessary to say, no, that isn't accurate.

This is accurate. Here's the reasons why. That's the way you find out whether there's disinformation.

Whenever I hear the word disinformation or misinformation, I am suspicious because it's just a way of labeling some. Now, look at if something is not true. Okay, fine.

Just say it's not true. Well, that's not true. And here are the reasons why it's not true.

That's kind of a different posture. The disinformation language and even the so-called follow the science language is has become a kind of a demagogic tool to manipulate people. It's noise.

It's verbal bullying of people. Okay. And so I am very happy to follow the science where the science is well justified and not interfered with by ideological political considerations of those in power.

And I know when they're being interfered with when the doors are being slammed on free speech, people are not allowed to say that. And they're silenced by that disinformation. And by the way, that's all people have to say nowadays.

They make this kind of follow the science, follow the science. Well, it turns out that a lot of people are claiming follow the science regarding some of this stuff. It turns out there's all kinds of justifiable science on the other side.

But it's not possible for us to weigh all of the factors to kind of figure out the actual specific scientific truth of the matter because of the politics that are involved. So I'm all in favor of following the science. Just keep in mind that when people say that oftentimes it's manipulation, it's trying to silence the opposition for one particular very narrow parochial view of what the science seems to say.

Not under peer review because they don't allow that because that particular view that they say is supported by science is something that they're deeply committed to for other reasons. And they are going to want to consider the alternate evidence. So I think one thing that you could do in responding is just say, what do you mean by the science? Because as you mentioned, Greg, you have to separate the naturalistic worldview.

This is just in one area where this might come up, but separate the naturalistic worldview from the tools that we use to understand what's going on in the natural world. By the way, that's the distinction between science as a methodology. That's the tools in science as a metaphysical philosophy of materialism.

So here's where I think you need to help them understand the distinction. So I would say first, what do you mean by science? And they might reveal some sort of worldview issue with naturalism just by asking that. But maybe they won't.

So what you could ask is maybe something like assuming this is a question of science pointing to the existence of God or design or something like that. You could say, well, is it possible that science, the tools of science, which is what we're talking about here, could point to the work of God in the work, could point to the existence of God. Is that is that possible? Just hypothetically.

Now, hypothetically, that should be possible. If we can look at the natural world and we can determine certain things, a mind created something or whatever it is, then that should be possible. If they think it's impossible, I think that's a clue that they're looking at science as being an entire worldview of naturalism.

Right, right, right. And the step in between there is if science can give evidence to physical details from which we properly infer intelligence. So we're going to say, well, we see this information, this code on the DNA double helix and code is characteristically actually universally a result of intelligence.

We know that because of computer code. So is it appropriate to infer from the scientific discovery of the code on the DNA molecule that there was an intelligence responsible for that code? And that's the question you're asking. I'm just adding that detail.

Science produces information about the natural world that itself seems to imply an intelligent creator. It's that second step there that you mentioned that if they don't allow for that, then it's not science doing the work. It's not the methodology of the science.

It's the philosophy of materialism that's doing the work. And another way you might be able to separate it in their mind is if you say something like, if the science were to point to the existence of a creator, a mind, a designer, would you follow that to that conclusion and see what they say? They might say that's impossible. And now we're right back into them.

Because that's not science is what they're going to say. But now they're dealing with the different definition. And here it might be helpful to make this distinction that is that we're trading on right now.

And that is there are two definitions of science. One is science as a methodology. It's a procedure you go to to discover details facts about the physical world.

But there's also another step. And this is more recent. I mean, since the enlightenment, more historically recent.

And that is that science is also governed by a metaphysical philosophy called materialism. So whatever conclusions you draw based on the evidence that you come up with in terms of the methodology, it has also got to comport with the philosophy of materialism. So if you can demonstrate that there's code in the DNA molecule, what seems to imply a code writer.

Well, the science tells you there's code. All right. That's what the science tells you.

It's the scientists that tell you you can't infer a philosopher. You can infer a creator there because now you're going outside of the bounds of our materialistic philosophy. Those are separate enterprises.

But if you can get them to agree with you that it's a way of discovering true things about the world rather than entire worldview, then you could say, I agree, let's follow the science. But in order to do that, we have to look at the actual evidence, not just listen to the declarations of people who are who are scientists. Because scientists are fallible.

And science is a way of discovering what is true. We use logic. We use thinking.

We use experimentation. We use all sorts of tools to find what's true. So we can't just follow the science.

We follow what's true by using the tools of science. And so now let's talk about those things and whatever topic we're discussing. This is why I'm very reluctant to even use language of the authority of science because I don't think that the discipline of science is authoritative.

I think some things that scientists find out through good methodology are true because they're well justified, but they aren't to be taken as true just because scientists say so. And scientists are the authority. There's a distinction there that's important to keep in mind.

Let's go on to a question from Tracy. Often evolutionists seem to think that anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is a tin foil hat, flat earther. However, most of them don't have a good theory on how life began.

The probability against the primordial soup theory is staggering. Is the lack of a good biogenesis theory a good tactic to support the teleological argument? Yes, I think entirely because in the way I present this particular issue in a talk, I give why I'm not an evolutionist. I don't get radically technical.

There's a lot of technical details. It's like if you think of a tree, there's all kinds of leaves on the tree. And you could pick out the leaves and it'll take you forever to, in a certain sense, defoliate the tree to show that the Darwinian evolution tree, the general theory is not reliable.

Better ways to go to the root. Okay, and it turns out that the two branches of the roots for the Darwinian model entail a biogenesis and transition. Now strictly strictly strictly strictly speaking, Darwinism only applies to living systems.

So it doesn't apply to how dead stuff becomes living stuff. Okay, the issue of the origin of life. But even that tactical issue aside, all of these people, since they're materialists advancing this materialistic system and Darwinism is a materialistic system.

It has no intention to it at all. It has no teleology. There's no goal to it all.

When you try to impose a goal there, all of us, you're violating the tenets of fundamentalist Darwinism, all right? So, but all of these people, being materialists, have to explain the origin of life and the explanation for the kickoff of the whole Darwinist enterprise is a biogenesis life from non-life. And so it's entirely fair to ask, how do you get the kickoff that initiates the rest of the game, so to speak, called the Darwinian development of life? And if you can't get it to kickoff, you don't have a game. These are two necessary components.

You've got to get life in its simplest form. You've got to get living stuff from dead stuff. And then you have to get the living stuff now, which is very simple, at least with regards to the complexity of life that follows.

And how does it get more complex over time? And then you have to have a mechanism for that. And that's where you have mutation in natural selection that is suggested as the mechanism. But if you don't have a kickoff, you don't have a game.

And this is one of the biggest problems with the whole Darwinian project. They cannot make sense of the origin of life. And as time has gone on, it's gotten harder and harder and harder.

The more they know about the most simple living organisms, the incredible complexity there. And the necessity for things in the biological, the genome, so to speak, of even those simple living things, how this comes together, it requires too much information. You have to have an infusion of information.

There's no means by which naturalistic, Darwinistic people can account for the infusion of information that is necessary to get dead stuff. To come alive. And so I think you were right.

Who are we talking about? Is this James? Tracy. Oh, sorry, Tracy. Yeah, this is a very significant element in the whole picture.

You've got to have the, and again, using this simplified terminology, you have to have to kick off before the game. Now, there's all kinds of problems with how the game advances. And most of the discussion regarding Darwinian ideas are addressing the game, as it were.

What about the mechanism? Is it adequate? Do we see this in the fossil record, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? But prior to that, there's a necessary condition that has to be in place. And that's, like I said, getting living stuff from dead stuff. How does that work? And you've got to be able to answer that question to claim that Darwinism is a fact.

And if they can't answer that question, they can't claim it's a fact. And you said it required a lot of information, but it requires more than information. A book has information, but it's not alive.

So life is something beyond even the physical information that are not the information physically encoded into some material. Even a book aside, it's a great illustration, but even a corpse. The corpse has all kinds of information on all of those cells, but the corpse is not living.

That's what a corpse is. So even having the biological information in place is not enough. Something else is required.

Excellent. Life is kind of a crazy thing when you think about it. What is it? I mean, it's not anything material as you just pointed out.

So I don't know. It's just a very interesting topic. I mean, we have an answer, but I don't know how a materialist could have an answer.

Well, the whole notion of what they used to call the Elon Vital, the vital force. This is all out of favor now, just like souls and the so-called ghost in the machine. But you can't get away from the fact that consciousness is not physical, nor is life.

There's something in addition to all the physical components, like you said. And that's what there's no room for that because their metaphysic does not allow for that. If it were purely physical, we could have created it by now, at least some sort of primitive kind of life.

We can't do that. Well, we haven't yet. You know, people like Fazrana over at one of our friends over at Reasons to Believe, RTB, he thinks it's going to happen when things are connected, it just so.

But that doesn't solve the problem because all that will do is say that we can manipulate substances in a way in which this life force is manifest, but it doesn't mean the life force is physical. Now, that may never happen. I'm just saying that this is what he says, but it doesn't change the equation.

He's fair to say, careful to say, it doesn't change the ultimate equation, even if it were to happen. It's hard for me to believe that will ever happen, but I guess we'll find out. What I want to do, and I'm glad he said it this way, that we're covering our bases because it's like somebody said, what if the machine became conscious? Wouldn't that prove that there are no souls? I said, no, it would prove that the machine had a soul.

That's what it would prove because consciousness is the kind of thing that is not characteristic of it's not physical. It's not material. It's something other than the material.

It's a first-person awareness. And actually, physicalists think we're physical machines that are conscious. So finding a non-wet machine that has consciousness would be no different than what we think that they think we are anyway.

So that doesn't solve any problems. We'll see. Thank you, James and Tracy.

We appreciate hearing from you. And we hope you'll join us again on Stand Reason's hashtag STRSQ podcast.

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